Honeypot vs reCAPTCHA

Both the anti-spam honeypot feature and reCAPTCHA are used to prevent spam submissions on Gravity Forms, but they use different methods to achieve this goal.

The anti-spam honeypot feature works by adding a hidden field to the form that is designed to trick spammers into filling it out. Since the field is hidden from human users, any submission that fills out this field is likely to be from a spam bot rather than a real person. Gravity Forms can then automatically reject any submission that includes content in the honeypot field, effectively blocking spam bots.

On our builds, the honeypot feature should always be enabled on all forms. You can check if the feature is enabled by looking at the Form Options section in the form settings.

On the other hand, reCAPTCHA is a more sophisticated anti-spam solution that uses a combination of machine learning algorithms and human verification to distinguish between bots and real users. When a user submits a form with reCAPTCHA enabled, they may be prompted to complete a challenge that requires them to identify certain objects in an image or solve a simple puzzle. The results of these challenges are then analyzed by Google’s servers to determine whether the user is a human or a bot. If reCAPTCHA determines that the user is a bot, the submission is rejected.

The reCAPTCHA option requires some work on the customer’s end to set up. Detailed instructions for setting up reCAPTCHA can be found here.